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THE FUNCTIONS OF DRAMATIC STRUCTURE
IN DEATH OF A SALESMAN
A THESIS
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree Ma s t er of Arts in the Gr a dua t e
School of The University of Detroit
By
SISTER MARY BETTINA HOLECEK, S . S . N. D.
The University of Detroit
1960
PREFACE
Certain branches of scientific literary criticism
h ave not advanced significantly in some two thousand
years since Aristotle wrote his Poetics .
Consequently,
one result of the abundant critical activity carried on
during recent centuries has been to consolidate his position as , one might say, the leader in the science .
This
is in many ways to the good , but one of its stultifying
effects has been to give the dignity of aesthetic canon
to statements which Aristotle himself may have intended
as no more than scientific descriptions of the art forms
prevalent in his society.
The particular Aristotelian-inspired concept which
concerns us here has been held as tenet throughout We s t e r n
drama up to the present time, despite recent disputations
of it .
It springs from Aristotle's description of the
tragic figure as "highly renowned and prosperous " and
" abov e the common level. "
The contemporary playwright
Arthur Miller , whose work is the subject of this study,
seems to be the mos t important current challenger of this
t raditional conception of the tragic hero , and it is quite
possible that the weight of his drama puts his disputation
among the most signi ficant t hus far .
Nei t he r a s u mmar y nor an evaluati on of
is i n tended he r e .
M~i l l e r ' s
wo rk
Rather, wha t purports t o b e simpl y an
examination is ma de of Mi l l e r ' s basic drama tic theory and
the particular fo rm of De a th of
~
Sa lesman- -hi s mos t
unconventional use of dr amati c technique, which i s at t he
same time the closest struc tural articula tion of h i s
theory .
Howeve r , because such a r estric t i on of s ubjec t
necessarily obviates wider areas of stu dy, an appendix
which briefl y i ndic a t es s ome of the l i terary i nfluen ce s
upon FU l l e r ' s work h a s b e en added.
By these means it may be di scove red whether or not
Mi l l er has worked wi t h a new con ce pti on o f the t ragic he ro
or tried to adapt t he tr aditi onal one , and whether t he
dramat i c form whi ch spri ng s most direc tly f r om hi s theory
does i n fact p e rmi t tragic s cop e .
This study h a s been discipline d by t he directi on of
C. Carroll Hol l i s , present head of t he University Eng li sh
Department .
Its writer is also indebted to Profe ssors
Clyde P. Craine and Robert J . Kearns, S . J ., who have made
detailed suggestions as t o its final form .
TABLE
OF
CONTENTS
Page
Chapter
I
ARTHUR
~rr LLER ' S
THEORY OF TRAGEDY •• • • • • • •
• • • • • •
2
••••• • • • • • •
9
DRAWtATIC STRUCTURE I N DEATH OF A SALES111AN • • • •
16
Realism as dramatic method • • • • • • • • • •
17
Expressionist t e chni qu e s • • • • • • • • • • •
19
WI LLY LOMAN AS SYMBOL • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
24
A commitment and its consequences
The t ragi c hero's pride
II
III
The salesman and pa t h os
••••• • • • • • •
25
• • • • • • • • •
28
• • • • • • • • • • • • • •
31
Tragic insight • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
33
Eloquent language
35
Tragedy and the human being
IV WI LLY AS TRAGIC HERO
V
1
• • • •
0
•
0
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
THE MORAL FORCE OF THE PLAY • • • • • • • • • • •
APPENDIX:
.......
......... ......
LITERARY INFLUENCES ON rU LLER
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
38
45
S2
CHAPTER
ARTHUR
MILLER' S
I
THEORY
OF
TRAGEDY
or Arthur 1tl11e r 's r i ve impo r t ant plays De ath or
~
Salesman, whi ch i s the mos t di s tinct ive in r orm, h a s be en
most highly reputed .
Brooks Atkinson, probab l y t he be s t -
Imown theatre critic in Ameri c a , calls i t a gen e rally
accep te d tragi c mast erpi ec e . 1 How ever, there a r e s ev eral
equally pr ominent an d auth ori tati ve obser ve r s or the c on temporary drama who believe t hat, signiricant a s i t may
be , Salesman has not qu ite the stature or tragedy.
Proressor Alan S . Downer, i n his schol arl y sur vey or
twentieth-century Ameri can p l ay s , makes the j u dgmen t: "For
Americans, an d ror societi es s i milar l y organiz ed, Death
or a Sal e s man is trage dy .
For other socie ties it is a
le sser t hing, a c a s e h i story, pe rhap s . ,,2
Hi s r emark
implies a socio -economic bias wh ich no stu dent can deny
is present in t his or any other or tU l l e r ' s wor ks - -be i t
1 Foreword t o New Voi c e s in the American Theatre ( New
Yo r k , Mo de r n Library;- 1955), P7 VITi .
2 Firty Years or Amer i can Drama 1900-!22Q (Chicago,
Regnery, 1951), p . 75 .
1
2
a novel, short story, essay, or play.
At the
sa~e
time,
it seems to point at the playwright's reverence for social
and economic laws as limiting the scope of his drama.
In
this playa traveling salesman is the so-called hero of
the action in which his near-insanity and eventual suicide
seem to result from failure in his business.
Can the
break-up of an incompetent salesman be tragedy?
Before consideration of the tragic claims of this
play, its relationship to Mi l l er ' s aesthetic theory had
best be ascertained by examination of his basic dramatic
beliefs.
Much of the playwright's theory is a development
of his interest in man as a moral power.
He conceives of
tragedy primarily as a means of enlightenment, calling
particular attention to the force of social causation in
it.
He re-interprets the Aristotelian tragic hero in the
light of man's changed position in modern society.
A
COMMIT1ffiNT
AND
ITS
CONSEQUENCES
Of primary importance in the theory of lti l l e r ' s tragedy is the fact that every play of his is literally built
on his concern with a man's "commitment."
He maintains
that there is no human being who does not at least once
during his lifetime give himself so thoroughly to some
certain value, conflict, or challenge that he cannot bear
to disengage himself from it.
The instant of self-
3
dedication, to Mi l l er , is "that moment when • • • a man
diffe rentiates himself from every other man, that moment
when out of a sky full of stars he focu ses on one star ."
For him as playwright the symbolic value of a character i s
determined by the nature of the man ' s co mmit ment , and he
uses dramatic form to t he end that the character's involvement be discovered and clarified.
The less capable a man
is of renouncing his co mmitment , Mi l l e r believes, the
closer he ap proaches a tragic existence . 3
Actually ,
I~ l l e r ' s
dr ama does not f oc us on the commit -
ment for its own sake or for whatever dramatic value may
lie in it .
Rather , the man ' s engagement and its inevitable
co nsequences are intende d by their cause -and-effect r el a tionship to make t he au dience aware of an invisible order
in the wor l d where pr ev iously there may h av e seemed to be
none .
I t was Harold Clurman, the New York director and
former leader of the Group Theatre mov emen t , who first
described Mi l l e r as a moralist,4 and the playwri gh t's
s ubsequent statements of dr ama t i c intention h ave p r ov e d
him correct .
Mi l l er takes the end of drama t o be the
creation of a hi gher consciousness in t he audience , a
3 "In trodu ction, " Arthur Mi l l e r ' s Collected Plays
(New York , Viking , 1957), p . 7.
p.
4 " The at r e: At tention l" NR , CXX (Feb . 28, 1949) ,
27.
4
heightened awareness of causation in the light of known
but heretofore inexplicable effects . 5
It is to this
purpose that he se arches out a man's commitment, the
central choice which puts him in his particular relationship to men and things .
In the same review of Death of
~
Salesman, Clurman
characterized Mi l l er ' s talent as being for "a ki n d of
humanistic jurisprudence: he sticks to the facts of t he
case .,,6
The playwri ght, apparently taking up Clurman's
statement, has gone on to describe dr ama as b ei ng , in one
sense, "a species of jurisprudence ."
Some pa rt of a p l ay,
he says, must ' take the prosecutor's role, s omething else
the defense, and the entirety must engage t he Law. 7
He
proceeds to try his man before an audience for trans gression of an accepted social, moral, or economic code.
However, the awe which Mi l l er sets out to provoke
lies not so much in the commitment as i n its unavoi da ble
consequences .
These visibly demonstrate for his au dience
the workings of the inner laws of the world.
For hi m
there is a compelling wonder in the fact that the consequences of an action are as real as the action i tself;8
5
"Introduction," p.
6
Clurman, p .
7
"Introduction"
, pp .
8
Ibid. , p. 18 .
53.
27 .
24-25.
5
therefore the moral world which his plays insist upon is
a world not as concerned with ri ght and wrong as with
cause and e f f e c t--wh a t he calls "process" or "how things
connect ."
His plays say , in effect , that an invisible
orde r in the world becomes recognizable whe n a man brings
into being the issue of a choice he has ma de .
Tragic enlightenment .
I t is this cre ation of a
higher cons ci ousn e s s in the audience that Ifi l l er takes to
be the distinguishing property of tragedy.
Any drama
which does not illuminate the ethical , in his opinion,
can reach no high e r than p a t h os :
Let me pu t i t t his way . When ihr . B. , while
walking down the street, is struck on t he head
by a falling pi ano , the ne wspapers call this a
tragedy . In fact, of course, this is only t he
pathetic end of Mr . B. No t only because of the
accidental nature of t he death; t hat is ele ment ar y . It is pathe tic because it me r ely arouse s
our feelings of sympat hy, sadnes s, and pos s i b ly
of identification . • • •
To my mind the essential di fference, and the
precise difference , between tragedy and pathos
is that tragedy brings us not only sadness ,
sympathy, identification and even fear; it also,
unlike pathos , brings us knowledge or enlightenment .
But what sort of knowledge? In the largest
sense , it is knowledge pertaining to the right
way of living in the world. The manne r of Mr .
B. 's de ath was not such as to illustrate any
principle of living . In s hort, there was no
illumination of the ethical in it .9
9 "On the Nature of Tragedy," Death of a Salesman
(Dec ca Records , DX-102) .
6
Miller recalls having realized at the outset of work on
his first important play,
ill !!l
Sons, that what he had
written up to that time--as well as almost every play
he had ever seen--had been written for theatrical production "when it should have been written as a kind of testimony whose relevance far surpassed theatrics."lO
His
testimony is of the inner laws of reality: what he calls
the "invisible world of cause and effect, mysterious, full
of surprises, implacable in its course."ll
Miller conceives of any great writer as a "destroyer
of chaos, a man privy to the councils of the hidden gods
who administer the hidden laws that bind us all and destroy us if we do not know them." l 2 Tragedy, to him, is in
this sense a means--"the most perfect means we h av e of
showing us who and what we are, and what we must be--or
strive to become.,,13
Social causation.
Together with his belief in an
invisible order of things Mi l l e r holds the equally s trong
conviction that social and economic laws are part of its
workings.
10
He formed both of these assurances during the
"Introduction," pp. 17-18.
11 "The Shadows of the Gods," Harper's, CCXVII (August,
1958), 37.
12
Ibid.
13
"On the Nature of Tragedy."
7
e co nomi c depression of the 'thirties, which impressed him
then as "a reality which had been secretly accumulating
its climax according to its hidden laws to explode illusion a t the proper time ."
Afterwards he found himself
thinking differently about the characters whom he met in
books or saw on the stage .
a living? he wondered .
vVhat do these people do for
Where do they work?
As he puts
it , this is what he had been forced to realize:
The hidden laws· of fate lurked not only in the
characters of people, but equally if not more
imperiously in the world beyond the family
parlor . Out there were the big gods, the ones
whose disfavor could turn a proud and prosperous and dignified man into a frightened shell
of a man whatever he thought of himself and 1
whatever he decided or didn't decide to do .
4
Hi s conviction of an inner reality working according
to its own hidden laws has led la l l e r to take up the
defense of "social" plays.
Every great drama, he believes,
is " s o ci a l " in the true meaning of the word.
Despite the
term's unpleasant connotations, which are due to its historically recent association with theatrical attacks upon
the evils of society, the right conception of a social
play seems to him to be the widest dramatic concept available to us thus far .
He maintains that during the Greek
classic al period a drama presented for public performance
t4
"The Shadows of the Gods," p .
36.
8
had to be "so cial": t o t he Gr eek a play was by definition
a dr amati c cons i deration of the way men ou ght to live
t ogether . l S
" Socie t y" Mi l l er conceives of as "a power and mystery
of cu stom • • • ins ide the man and surrounding h im, as t he
fi sh is in the se a and the sea inside the fis h , his birthplace and burial ground, promise and t hreat .,,16
He emphat -
ically told a group of fellow p l aywr i gh t s , "• • • y ou c annot even create a t r u t h f u l l y drawn ps ychological entity on
the s t age unti l you unde rstand his social relations and
their power to make him what he is and to prevent hi m from
being what h e ·is not .,,17
This , however , i s not to say that he would limit personal c ausati on in the drama .
On t he contrary, he dis-
cre di t s the r epre se n t a t i on of any forces - -be t hey social ,
e co nomi c , or p sychological- -which makes them see m to de t er mine completely the characters' actions .
r e alism
h~s
He believes that
become caught up in t he idea that man is the
sum of external forces wor k i ng upon him an d psych ol ogi c a l
forces within him. 1 8 "Yet , " he says , " an innate value ,
I S "On Social Plays,"
Vi king , 19S5 ) , p . 1 .
~
View
~
t he Bri dge ( New York,
16
" I n t r odu c t i on, " p . 30 .
17
" Th e Shadows of t he God s , " p o 39 .
18 The extreme type of realism describe d here is co mmonly te rmed " na t ur a l i s m" but , f or whatever reason , Mi l l er
avo i ds the wor-d ,
9
an innate wi l l , does in fact posit itself a s real • • •
because , however systematical ly accounte d for , he is more
than the sum of h is sti mul i and i s unpre dictable b eyo n d a
certain poi n t . "
He maintains that , like a h i s t or y , a drama
whi ch stops a t the point of condit ioning fails to ref lect
reali t y .19
Miller spe aks f or "an organ ic a e s theti c, " which h e
de scribes as "a t r a cking of imp uls e and causation from
t he i n di vi dual to the wo r ld and back a gain .,,20
A drama
h a s stature and i n t ensi t y i n propo rtion to the wei ght of
i t s app licati on t o all men , he says , and i t g a i n s this
we i ght b y dealing wi t h the whole man , n either his subjec ti v e nor his social li fe alone . 21 Any play whi ch fails
either to r eal ize t h e complete personalities of its charac t ers or to engage it s re levancy for t h e r a c e he believes
wi l l issue no t i n t ragedy but pathos , which he re gards as
oppos ed t o dramat ic effect .
THE
TRAGIC
HERO 'S
PRIDE
In order to r ise above t h e merely pathetic , then ,
ril l l er b e l i ev es that the h ero of trage dy must be a wholly
54.
19
" I n t r odu ct i on, " p .
20
"The Sh adows of the Gods , " p .
21
" On Soci al Play s ," p .
4.
43.
10
and intensely realized human being with all of the forces
b rought to bear upon him which do in real life influence
a man in his position.
Beyond this, he specifies that
the hero must have a pride which approaches fanaticism- 1liller 's interpretation of what is traditionally known
as the " tragic flaw ."
The flaw in the character, he says,
" i s re ally nothing - -and ne ed be nothing - -but his inherent
unwilli ngness to remain passive in the face of what he
conc eives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of
his rightful status ."
From this point of view, only those
who accept their lot without active retaliation are "flawless"; and most people , he adds, are in that category.
The tragic hero, unlike most of us, is ready to lay down
his life, if need be, to secure his sense of personal
dignity .22
His pride is such that he will dare to break
the known social law, the accepted mores of his people,
to test and discover his and the law' s necessity.23
In
this respect , Ntl l l er conceives of what Aristotle ca l l e d
hybris (the pride) and hamartia (the tragic flaw) of the
t r agic hero as one .
His flaw, fliller says in effect, is
pride .
The he ro 's social , intellectual , and moral rank
22
1951 ),
23
"Trage dy and the Common Man, " TA, XXXV (March,
48.
" On Social Play s ," · p. 8.
11
Miller considers in no way as relevant as the intensity
with which he makes his commitment .
Admittedly, he says,
ir a character were s hown on the stage who went through
ordinary actions and then wa s suddenly revealed to be the
president or the United States, his actions immediately
would assume a much greater magnitude and have possibilities or much gr e a t er meaning than ir he were a nei ghborhood store-owner .
However, as Miller goe s on to say:
• • • his stature as a hero is not so utterly
dependent upon his rank that the corner grocer
cannot outdistance him as a tragic ri gure-provided, or course, that the grocer's career
engages the issues or, ror instance, the survival or the race, the relationships or man to
God--the questions, in short, whose answers
24
derine humanity and the right way to live •• •
From Miller's point or view, then, t he stature or a tragedy depends upon the scope or the law questioned b y the
hero .
But the intensity with which he makes his challenge
is also important.
As Miller sees it, what makes a character tragic-regardless or the man's personal traits, his awareness
or what is happening to him, or his relative gu i l t in his
own catastrophe--is the concentration or his emotion on
the rixed point or his commitment:
24 "Introduction," p . 32.
12
It matters not at all whether a modern play
concerns itself with a grocer or a president
if the i ntensity of the hero 's commitment to
hi s course is less than the maximum possible .
I t matt ers not at all whether the hero falls
from a great height or a small one, whether
h e is highly conscious or only dimly aware of
what is happening, whether his pr i de br i ngs
the fall or an unseen pattern written be hind
clouds; if the intensity, the human p a s s i on
to surpass his given bounds, the fanatic
insistence upon his self-conceived role--if
these are not present there can only be gn
outline of tragedy but no living thing .2~
Again, pride is the dominant force which he finds in t he
t r agic figur e.
Heroic stature .
Consummate pride is Arthur Mi l l er ' s
measure of the hero's stature .
qu ite
co~non
Here h e differs from a
belief in Aristotle's statement that a tragic
hero should fall from the heights .
Mi l l e r denies this
Aristotelian convention--that the hero must be "widely
renowned and prosperous" and "above the common level"-on the grounds that its originator lived in a slave society .
"Wh en a vast number of people are divested of al t er-
natives , as slaves are ," he says , "it is rather inevitabl e
that one will not be able to imagine drama, let al one tragedy, a s bei ng possible for any but the higher ranks of
so ci ety . "
He c l a i ms that so c ial rank was a mere prerequi -
site for he roic stature in Greek times, for t hen only a
2S
"Intro duc t ion ," p . 33.
13
person of wealth and distinction could have had open to
him alternatives of sufficient magnitude to change materi ally the course of his life . 26
A modern man faced with
weighty alternatives is, on the other hand, not necessar ily above the common social level .
In l I er claims that what strikes the spectators of a
tragedy when they see its hero shake his world to its
foundations is their own underlying fear of being displaced, of having their chosen images of themselves torn
from them.
He believes that in modern times it is the
ordinary man who has mos t experience of this fear . 27
Con-
sequently he chooses for his tragic hero a common man who
is uncommonly devoted to his co mmit ment .
Consciousness in t he h e r o .
Ifi l l e r also would re -
interpret the established Ar i s t ot e l i an tradition t hat the
hero of tragedy should be conscious of his fall --a convention which Shakespearean tragedy entrenched by making its
central
f~gures
not only aware of their situations bu t , in
most cas e s , poetically articulate concerning their destinie s , weaknesses, and mistakes .
"Complete consciousness ," Mi l l e r insists , "is p os s i ble only in a play about forces , like Prometheus, but not
26 " I n t r o du ct i on," p . 32.
27
"Tragedy and the Common Man , " p .
48.
in a pl ay abo ut p eop le . "
I n hi s opinion , t he hero n eed
h ave onl y suf f i ci ent awareness of h is si t u a ti on to call
up a surpassing de gree of it in the au dienc e .
To prove
maxi mum awareness unne ces sary h e ci te s Oedipus Rex :
Ha d Oe dipus • • • been mo r e conscious and mor e
aware of t h e f or c e s a t wor k upo n h i m he mus t
s ur e ly h ave sai d t hat he was not r e a l l y t o
blame fo r h aving cohabi ted wi th his mo ther
sinc e nei t her he nor an yone el se knew she was
his mother . He must s urely deci de t o di vor ce
h er , pr ovi de f or thei r children, firm ly r e s olv e
to i nve stigate the family background of h is
next wi f e • • . ' But he is consci ous only up to
a point , t h e poi n t at whi ch gu i l t b egins . Now
h e , is i n con s olab l e an d must tear out his eye s . 28
It is e nough , TMl l er b e l ie v e s , t h a t t h e he ro know h ow h e
has dive r g ed fr om what is l awf ul-- i n what way he is
gu i l t y ; h e ne ed no t e ven have had c onsci ous reasons fo r
hi s transgression .
Some dramati c criticis m seems to equate the he ro 's
ability to v erbal ize h is s ituation with his co ns ciousne ss
of it, wh~ ch i s, a s ttl l l e r say s, qui te anoth e r t hing . 29
A c er t a i n i ntellectual qu ickne ss in th e hero an d b ril liance in h i s u s e of language are commonp l ac e in poe ti c
drama, but t h eir be ing require d of t h e ordi nary man when
h e is the central fi g ure of a pro se trage dy may n ot be
artistically correct .
28
"Intro duct i on ," p ,
29
Ibid .
3.5.
As with the hero's degree of consciousness, Miller
believes that the amount of personal guilt in his destruc tion nee d not be great so long as he is wholly committed
to whatever it is that causes him to break the law .
Both
Willy Loman in Miller's Death of a Salesman and Eddie
Carbone in his more recent
~ ~
from the Bridge are men
passionately dedicated to things which they will not consciously admit .
If a protagonist's devotion to his course
is obvious enough, Miller leaves hidden even the law which
brings on the catastrophe.
Under such circumstances both
the hero and t he audien ce still can pe rceive t h e workings
of an unseen order in t he ineluctable consequence s whi ch
hi s commitment brings up on him. 30
30 Mil ler's testimony to this moral orde r is discussed
as the maj or achievement of Death of ~ Salesman in Chapter
V, pp . 38-44 .
CHAPTER
DRAMAT IC
STRUCTURE
IN
II
DEATH
OF
A
SALES N~N
Though it is like 1tl l l e r ' s other plays in its concern
with its hero's commitment , Death of
sti ll closer to his dramatic theory .
it s structure .
~
Salesman s tands
Thi s is because of
The very form of the play- -the irregular
process of mind through which Wi l ly Loman suff ers during
the last day of his lif e - -is itself a r e sult of t he sales man 's commitment to an unrealistic image of h i ms el f .
As
a consequence of pursui ng f or s o many y e ar s the counterfeit
di gni t y embodie d in his i dea of s ucc e s s, Wi l l y now f inds
the truth about him s e l f overwhelming in its accumulated
force .
As Mi l le r puts it , h e is llliterally at that terri -
b l e moment when the voice of the pas t is no longer di stant
but qu ite "a s loud a s the voic e of t he pr e s en t . ll
For thi s
r eas on the struc ture of the p l ay is a ll mob i l e co ncurrency"
of past and present , fantasy and biography.
In constructing this p lay Mi l l e r was absorbed by the
co n cep t t h a t " no t hing i n li f e h appen s ' nex t ' but that
every t h i ng exists together and at the same t ime within
us . "
Th e re is no past to be ll b rought fo r wa r d" in a human
16
17
being, the playwright says, but he is his past at every
moment l and his present is "merely that which his past is
capable of noticing and smelling and reacting to ."
Because
his salesman-hero is in a peculiar p s y ch ol og i c a l state
which exactly exemplifies this relationship between past
and present, Mi l l e r sought "a form which, in itself as a
form, would literally be the process of Wi l l y Loman's way
of mind.,,2
When he combined expressionism with realism to create
this form, he made an innovation in dramatic techniques.
In his own belief, Salesman "broke the bonds of a long
tradition of
~ealism."
Even as it did so, however, the
play's approach was kept "consistently and rigorously subjective" so that it would not depart from its basically
realistic style . 3
REALISM
AS
DRAMATIC
METHOD
As ruller sees it, realism is one of the two b asic
approaches to characterization found in all We s t er n drama.
He describes it as being designed to portray man in his
relations with his fellow men rather than--as is heroic
I Ibsen's influence on this point of Miller's theory
is discussed in the appendix, pp . 45-46 .
2
"Introduction," pp . 23 -24.
3
Ibid., p . 39 .
18
characterization- -his relationship to social and moral
law.
an
Whereas the heroic figure, Miller says , is primarily
exemplar of a moral or ethical principle at work upon
men--as is true of the main figure in early Greek plays- the realistic character is created through the details of
"his turns of speech, his peculi arities of dress , his p ersonal habits - -in other words , through those things that
make him unique . "
His identity rests not so much on what
he stands for as who he is .
Rather than his career, the
detail of his motives is emphasized .
J~ l l e r
believes
that a playwright chooses this style when he decides that
the private or famil y aspects of his hero's life, rather
than the social or symbolic side, will predominate in a
play .
Hi s own approach, he says, h a s varied from the
realistic to the he r oi c in accordance with the relative
proportion of p s y ch ol og i c a l - - a s oppose d to social--causation in each of his dramas . 4
Mill~r
remarks on the different treatment of t i me
called for in each of these two basic styles .
For heroic
characterization a dramatist must compact time so as to
emph a s i ze "an element of existence which in life is not
visible or ordinarily felt with equivalent power" --its
symboli c meaning .
Like a prosecuting attorney , h e fast ens
4 Ar t hur 1dller speaking on and reading from The
Cruc ible and Death of a Salesman (Spoken Arts Records ,
DIstinguished Playwright Se r ies , 704) , side 1.
19
only on those actions of t h e hero which are germane to the
construct ion of his symbol .
(~tlller
believes this to be
t h e reason for the Greeks ' imposition of the unity of time
upon t hei r drama- -not that it was arbitrary but rather " a
concomitant of the preponderant Greek interest in the fate
an d career of the hero rather than his private characteristics .")
For a realistic style, on the othe r hand, a
playwright creates a semblance of hours , months, and years
during which the details shown are not clearly and avowedly
germane to the play's symbolic meaning . S
In the light of Mi l l er ' s distinctions between t hese
t wo dramatic styles , the study of Death of a Salesman
becomes more complex .
Although he cl a i ms fo r the playa
basic realism, it breaks the rules which he himself has set
do\Vll for the realistic approach .
As will be seen, Salesman
does make a symbol of its hero; and 1li l l e r himself admits
that its treatment of time "explodes the watch and t he
calendar ."
This dualism of te chnique results from his use
of expressionistic elements to complement the psychological
realism of the play .
EXPRESSIONIST
TECHNIQUES
Bef ore Willy Loman has been on stage for ten minutes
the audi ence knows any number of realistic de t a i l s about
S
" Introduction , " pp .
S-6.
20
his life : his age, his sales territory , what he likes to
eat late at night, the car he drives , t he nei ghborhood in
which he lives, h ow he has been troubled wi th mind-wandering, his disap point ment with h i s sons, etc .
Bu t the ensu-
ing quarter -hour of the p l a y g i v e s another sort of detail:
the exact progression of a memory which forces itself upon
him at a particular mome n t that evening .
In an easy change
from t he kitchen of h i s ho me to the forestage, he relives
what hap pene d almost t wenty ye a r s a go whe n h e h ad r eturned
from a sales trip to be wi l d l y g r ee t ed b y h i s sons, then
in their teens .
I~ l l e r
g r a du a l l y .
introduces Salesman 's expressionistic touches
First there is the ske le tal setting of the
Loman home, t hen a flute leitmotiv for Wi l l y , non-realistic
li ghting sug gestive of the trees which formerl y surrounde d
his home, free move ment in ti me and space between one s tag e
area and another, musical t he mes repr esenting others o f
the important characters, and t he styli ze d charact e ri z ati on
of Wi l ly ' s rich brother Ben .
p s y ch o l ogi c a l realit y
a~ e
Episo des whi ch have on ly a
act ed.
At ti mes memo ry crowds
upon memory in h i s dis t r a c ted mind: h is t houghts shi f t fr om
one incident to anot h e r, t hen back to t he first.
Bu t even as th e p l ay b r e aks t he ti me a nd spa ce limits
of conventional r ealis m, it ope ns t o a gr e a t e r ps y c h ol og ical r e ality .
It p l ays t he a g onies of Wi l l y ' s coll ap s e
21
against the pleasures and sorrows of his recollections ,
as John Ma s on Brown has observed :
M
r . Miller is interested in more t han the life
and fate of his central character . Hi s scene
seems to be Wi l l y Loman's mind and heart no
less than his home . Wha t we see might just as
well be what Wi l l y Loman thinks , feels , fears ,
or remembers as what we see him doing . This
giv es the playa double and successful exposure in time . I t makes possible the constant
fusion of what has been and what is . It also
enables it to achieve a greater reality by
6
having been freed from the f etters of realism.
Miller , who cl ai ms to have been both attracted and
repel led by the work of some unspecified post-World War I
German expressionists, wanted to use their " marvelous
shorthand" to deepen "humane, 'felt' characterizations"
rather than create the highly stylized fi gures typical of
expressionist plays .
In Salesman he consciously used
expressionist elements as such but always toward the maki ng
of a subjective truth, in the hope that his audience would
not be touched by the coldness and objectivity of the te ch nique )
Perhaps Salesman 's -comb i n a t i on of theatrical styles
was suggested to Mi l l er by the work of Thornton Wi l der .
At any rat e, he says of Wi l de r ' s Our Town what is perhaps
equally t rue of others of his plays: that it opens a way
6 Still Seeing Things (New York, McGr aw- Hi l l , 1950),
p . 200 .
7 "Introduction," p . 39.
22
toward "the dramatizati on of the larger truths of existence
whi le using the co mmon materials of life .,,8
Our Town i s
an essentially abstract play, however, and combines drama t i c techniques for an emphasi s opposite to that of
Salesman.
Wher e Wi l der us es realistic t ou ches t o support
t he bas ic s ymb olism of hi s p l ay ,
~li l le r
cre ates a p r imar i l y
realistic drama enforce d by expressionistic elements .
It should be no te d h e r e that even as Salesman's fo r m
closel y articulate s Mi l l er ' s conce r n wi t h co mmi t ment and
conseque nce s, it i s true to Wi l l y Loman ' s psycho l ogy on l y
during the peri od of his fin a l break down.
On t he i mpossi -
bility of gr af ti ng i t onto a cha r act e r whos e psycho logy
it does not refle ct, Mi l l e r c omment s that i t would b e false
to a mor e i nte grat ed pe rso na l i ty t o pretend t ha t t he pas t
and pr e s en t c oul d be "so open l y an d vo c a l ly i ntertwined
in his mind."
For thi s r eason lVIi l l er be lieves that b orrow-
ings of the form had t o f ail .
He himse l f h a s not us e d i t
again . 9
The pl a ywr i gh t exp l a i n s t hat Salesman ha s "no flas hback s "--a technique which he di s dai ns as "an eas y way to
elicit anterior information in a play"--but rat h e r is " a
mobi le concurrency of past an d present • • • because in
8
"The Famil y in Moder n Drama , " ~, CXCVII (April ,
19S6) , 39.
9 "Int r oduction," p . 26 .
23
his desperation to justify his life Wi l l y Loman has destroyed the boun d ar i es b e t we en now an d then. •• " 10
As
one reviewer observed, t his form succeeds in overcoming
the technical difficulties involved in presenting nostalgia
on the stage:
In an introspective age, if retrospection cannot be dramatized, i.e., acted, t here is no
excuse for the theater at all. Mr . Miller has
accomplished it. He· empl oys no past tense of
speech; he employs no species of scene, n or any
prismatic set of light clues. l l
This technique also hei ghtens the basic irony of the play
by showing in .r e l a t e d episodes of Willy ' s l i f e t he conflict
between what Mi l l e r calls "the previously assumed and
believed-in results of ordinary and accepte d actions" and
"their abrupt and unforeseen--but apparentl y logical-effects.,,12
Yet even as the y give support to the psychological
reality of his burdened mind, Salesman's expressioni stic
elements by their very nature work toward
m~~i ng
Wi l ly
Loman a symbol.
10
"Introduction," p. 26.
11 Kappo Phelan, "Death of a Salesman," Commonweal,
XLIX (1949), 520.
12
"Introduction," p , 26.
CHAPTER
WILLY
III
LOMAN
AS
SYi'lIBOL
1liller makes clear his belief in the innate symbolism
of all serious drama .
Every dramatic approach--including
realism--he contends "must finally arrive at a meaning
symbolic of the underlying action it has set forth."
He -
admits that the idea of a symbol is not ordinarily associated with realism but insists that differences between
dramatic techniques lie only in the various methods by
which symbols are created.
To prove his point, Mi l l e r refers to the extreme realism of Ibsen's social plays .
"After all," he asks, "at
the time he wrote A Doll's House how many Norwegian or
European women had slammed the door upon their hypocritical
relations 'wi t h their husbands?"
Ibsen did not simply
"report" life, Miller explains, but projected through his
personal interpretation of common events what he saw as
their concealed significance for society.
In dramatic
terms, what he did was create a symbol. l
The obvious inference from Miller's above-mentioned
1
" Th e Family in Modern Drama," p .
3.5.
2.5
remarks i s that Willy Loman means more than wh at he is .
Grant that an d we come to the que s ti on which has been
argued s ince Salesman was first produced in 1949 :
what do es Willy r epres ent?
or persona l?
Just
Is his tragedy occupational
Does he fail merely a s salesman or also a s
human being?
THE
SALES MAN AND
PATHOS
If i t were proved that Wi l ly is essentially only a
misfit salesman , the play by that vary fact could be dismissed as pathos .
As Mi l l e r himself states , t he conc ept
of the human being as something completely at the mercy
of the various f orces which besiege him- - " a dumb animal
moving through a preconstructed maze toward his inevitable
sleep "- -can never reach beyond the pathetic .
"Tragedy
comes when we are in t he presence of a man who has missed
ac complishing his j oy , " h e s ays .
"Bu t the joy must be
t here, t he , promise of the ri ght way of life must be t h e r e . "
Otherwise pathos rei gns, creating an essentially untrue
::>
pictur e of man. -
Obvious l y Mi l l er conce ive s of Willy a s b eing committed
t o the l aw of bu si n e ss, whi ch the play cle a rly presents as
a s us pec t "good. "
i t s power?
2
But is Wi l l y portrayed as help less under
Usually the criti cal debate as to whether or
" On t he Na t u r e o f Trage dy."
26
not he is purely a victim of the competitive economic
system s ub s i de s when t he character of hi s helpful, sane,
moderately successful neighbor Charley--who is also a
salesman- -is brought up .
At the "requiem" Charle y tries
to make excuses for Wi l l y on the grounds of his occupation : "A salesman is got to dream, boy.
territory ."
It comes with the
But Charley' s remarks in that scene , though
they r emain among t h e most quotable in the play, are gi ven
the lie by his own life .
Referring to Salesman as "some s or t of pluralism,"
Joseph Woo d Krutch insists that even while t he play seems
to be social determi nis m i t is primarily "a s tudy of the
effects of moral weakness and irresponsibility . "
Wi l l y
is a victim of society , Kr u t ch admits; but he is also a
fool:
He accepte d an e s s en t i a l l y vulgar and debased
as well as a false system of values . He himself says, and t h e audience seems to be expec ted to believe him, tha t he might have led a
happy life if he had followed his own bent and
become, for example , a carpenter, instead of
s ubmitting to the pr e j u di ce whic h makes a salesman more respect able than a man who works with
hi s hands . His tragic guilt --and it is h i s , not
society's - -was, in thi s vi ew, a very old-fashioned
one . He was not true to himself . Thus the moral
of the play becomes a classic al moral and must
necessarily presume both the existence of t he
classical ego and the powe r to make a choice . 3
3
1953),
" Mo de rni s m" in Mode r n Drama (Ithaca, Cornell U. P. ,
p.
125.
27
Ga s sn e r , who also sees the di cho t omy of c au s a t i on in the
pl ay , ag rees that Mi l l e r h a s placed Willy's peTsonal
responsibility foremost:
There is nothing in the play to indicate that
Willy's choice of a career as a salesman was
a social or economic necessity rather than
truly a necessity of his nature or of his illusions, granted the existence of a milieu favorable to the latter . The dichotomy of Mi l l er ' s
presentation of Wi l l y ' s plight is undoubtedly
in the play . It is not necessarily a virtue,
for it causes some confusion in our atti tude
toward Willy and in our perception of his situation . Yet the ' dichotomy is not necessarily as
egregious a flaw in Death of a Salesman as some
critics c laim. The dichotomy-is actually
present in the life and destiny that Mi l l e r ' s
Willy exemplifies.r~
Krutch's reference to "pluralism" in the play helps
to clarify Willy's dual position as vi c t i m and fool; but
because Mi l l e r believes realism- -the play's predominant
stage technique - -best suited to a portrayal of the private, family aspects of life, it seems that Wi l ly 's role
as self -deluded man should take pre-eminence over hi s
role as business failure .
In fact , most reputable critics
have concluded personal 'causation to be foremost in his
destruc t ion .
Mor e than sales competition, it is his delu-
sion whi ch pu t s him "way out there in the blue, riding on
a smile and a shoeshine "; and the psycholo gical condition
p.
4
The Theatre in Our Times ( New York , Crown,
348.
1954),
28
res ult ant fro m his exagge r ate d pr i de i s what cause s h im
fina lly to lose his job .
Simply as a busi n e s s fai lur e , h e perhaps would ap pe ar
tragic only t o t h os e acquaint e d wi th s t rongl y competitive
economic systems .
The r e is reasonable doubt , h oweve r ,
that the play could be co nsidered a t r agedy by anyone wh o
overlooked Wi l l y ' s more important failure as human being .
When his p er s on a l res po nsibi l ity f or refusing to e stimate
h i ms e l f sincerel y i s i gn ore d, he becomes merely a vi c t im
of t he American cant about s ucces s-- a pathetic figur e
exploi te d by a soc iety whi ch has l e d him to exp e ct mor e
than it can give h im .
TRAGEDY
AND
THE
HUMAN
BEING
Everyt h i ng we know about Willy, however - - and we do
reach deep and intimat e kn owledge of him- -points to the
f a ct that h e i s , ab ov e a ll, a s elf-made dupe .
Hi s stat ed
reasons fo r de ciding tha t "sel ling was the gr e a t est caree r
a man co uld wan t , " for i ns tance, show h im t o have b een an
i mpossible dreamer from . the be ginning .
Vfuen Mi l l e r i s
asked what Willy se ll s, h e can only r eply, " Himse l f"; '
in the ve r y no t ion of Willy as sa.Le eman h e sees an i r onic
s ymbolism, for the man ob viously has be en trying to purchase self-respec t by expending it .
,
"Introduction," p . 28.
29
But Willy's psychological state manifests the fact
that reality can be stretched only so far.
Miller says of
him that it was never entirely possible for him to face
the truth, and he cannot quite bring himself to do it even
now, when he desperately wants to find some meaning to his
life.
To the playwright, what makes Willy heroic and
tragic rather than simply foolish is this last agonized
awareness of being in a false position.
So constantly
haunted by the hollowness of what he had believed in, "so
aware • • • that' he must somehow be filled in his spirit
or fly apart," Willy gives his life to as sert his significance. 6
If this inflexible ideal is the source of Wi l l y ' s
tragic qualities,' it also gives him his essential symbolic
value.
What Miller believes to be the basic impetus of
any tragic hero--the supreme importance of his self-respect
even when he must lie to himself to preserve it--is, structurally
play.
~d
otherwise, the main concern of this particular
Probably every tragic hero is in some sense a
symbol; but few take on' that added meaning in as neat a
dramatic structure as Salesman's, where the form of the
play both reveals and results from his distortion of truth.
Salesman is primarily a study of the break-up of an
ideal rather than of a man, however inevitably Wi l l y ' s collapse will follow the disintegration of his self-image.
6
" Introduction," pp , 34-35.
30
His existence has co me t o depen d upon this convi ction that
h e i s hi s ideal--an i ndi s pe nsabl e , i n de pe n de n t bus inessman
gr e a t ly admired by h i s t wo succe s sful s ons .
Symboli ca lly
speaking, he has b e come his delusi on .
The play, s ay s Lou i s Unt ermeyer , is " t h e dramat ization
of everyman's wish -fulfillment, his bli n d des ire to succeed, even to co nquer the world .,,7
Herei n lies a ne c e s s ary
breaking of the laws of r eal i ty by all men : thei r co n struc tion of the tenuous ideals of t he mselves whi ch t ruth by
its very nature has t o des t roy .
Wi l l y , who will giv e up
his life rather t han his chosen image of himse l f, symbolizes the fool in each of us . 8 By that very f ac t, h e must
go the way of the tragic hero .
7
" Abou t the Play ," Death of a Salesman (De c c a Records,
DX-l02) .
8 The influence upon li l l er of Dostoevski , whose preoccupation with the character of the "holy fool" mal co me
to mind here , is discussed in the appendix , pp . 46-49.
CHAPTER
WI LLY
AS
IV
TRAGIC
HERO
It is precisely because Wi lly h as co mmit ted himself
to a delusion that he depart s from the tradit i onal characteris ti cs of a tragic hero .
Eve n in a discu ssion of
hi s personal qualities, howe ve r , the dramati c f orm of the
play demands considerat i on; t h e fa ct that i t s struct ur e
is t h e proc e s s of his mind stands fund ament a l t o an analysis of his stature as protagonist .
For Wil ly 's stag e
pr e s en ce cannot be presumed to equal his characteriza ti on,
as it would in a mor e conventional form of drama .
He does
not merely appear in the events on s t age : much of the
dramatic action occurs i n h is mind . l
His rich brother Ben, for instance, is les s a pers on
exterior to Wi l ly than his alter e go, a pers on i f i c ation of
1 Mi l l er h a s note d steps in the creati on of Sale s man
which show his struc tural intention: The fi rst i mage whi ch
occurred to hi m was of "an enormous face the hei ght of the
proscenium arch which would appear and then open up, and
we would see the inside of a man's head ." (In t roduction,"
p . 23.) He planned it that "The play 's eye was to revolve
from within Wi l l y ' s head, sweeping endlessly i n al l di r e c tions like a light on the sea, and nothing that forme d in
t he distant mist was to be left uninvestigated." (p . 30 .)
31
)2
his dream of easy wealth.
Just as Wi lly symbolizes t h e
uni versal fool, hi s brother s t an ds fo r t he dr e am whi ch
dominates hi m.
Throughout t he p l a y t he audi enc e catches
gl imp s e s of Wi l l y ' s vision as it is pe rs on i f i e d in the
stylized character of his brother.
But Ben's dramatic
function as Wi l ly ' s dream-symbol, though it woul d s eem
obvi ous, h a s yet to be widely unders tood--as t he s t i ll recurring critical demand f or incre ased i ns i ght in Wi l ly
shows.
Ben's is the onl y predominantly abstr a c t chara ct er i zation in Salesman.
That in hi m ra I l e r combined the two
dramatic styles i n a ratio opposite t o t ha t of the res t
of t he play indicates his distinctive symbolic f uncti on
in t he action.
He is t he only i mportant cha ra cte r not
physically pres en t t o Willy during the l ast day o f h is
life, and s o, l ike the rest of his brother 's pas t , i s on
stage only as he exists psychologic a lly t o Wi l l y .
is the
fir~t
But he
pe r s on t o whom Wi l l y i n h is pr e s ent dis tre s s
applies to know "What's the answer ?"; and i n the e n d, as
one critic explains, it ·i s Ben's answer which Wi l l y
accepts:
Ben "walked into t he jungle and three years
la ter came out with a million"; Be n aho t off
to Alaska t o "get in on the ground floor";
Ben was never afraid of new t er r i t or i e s , n ew
faces, new smiles. In t he end, Ben's last
territory--Death--earns Wi l l y Loman's family
$20 , 000 i nsur ance money , and a chance for t hem
33
fi nal ly to accomplish his dream: a dre am of
which they h av e ne ver been capable , in wp~ch
they also can only be buri ed: the old"million"
dream. 2
Although Ben is in fact dead , the force o f which he is a
symbol exerts enough influence upon Wi l l y to draw hi m to
suicide .
TRAGIC
INSIGHT
Out of a seemingly superficial understanding of Ben's
symbolic functio n grows t he prolonge d critical demand for
increased insight in Willy .
Gassner , finding "a failure
of tragic art" in the play, complains that not only does
Wi l l y never arrive at tragic insight but he even rejects
that of his son Biff.
Answering his own objection, how-
e ve r, the critic goes on to say:
But could he have arrived at this insight,
which amounts to realizing his (and Bi f f ' s )
littleness, without losing the h e r oi s m- confuse d and morally intellectually limited
though it be l--that gi v e s him some stature?
Wi l l y , as characterized by Mi l l er , is constitutionally incapable of giving up his dream.
That is his tragedy .3
Since Ben- -who symbolizes for his brother the unscrupulous
accru a l of wealth- -is seen by the audience as exerting the
2
Phelan, p . 520 .
3
Gassner, p . 348 .
34
pressure of Willy's dream, there seems to be no question
of lack of audience-insight into Willy's motives .
The
complaint is rather that, as Biff says, Willy "ne ver knew
who he was " and, in fact, deliberately refused to recognize
himself .
In the traditional theatre, increase of consciousness
in the audience is implemented directly by the hero's
awareness of bis problem.
Consideration of this play,
howeve r, forces a
as to whether insight in the
qu~stion
hero is a dramatic end in itself or only insofar as it
helps create awareness in the audience .
Salesman all but
denies self-knowledge to its hero, but its structural
resources allow its audience detailed insight into even
the lower levels of hi s mind.
Mor e ove r , the ve r y movement of Willy's attention-a frantic veering from present to past, memory to dream-reveals an intense consciousness in him which, though not
very well .ar t i cu l a t e d, is obviously the cause of hi s agony.
Miller sees in Willy an "overly intensified" awareness
that the life he has made is without inner meaning.
If
he r eally had been unaware of his separation from enduring
values , Miller says, he would have died contentedly, perhaps while polishing his car on a Sunday afternoon while
the b all game was coming over the radio:
35
But h e was agonized by his awareness of being
in a false position, so constantly haunted
by the ho l lowness of all he had placed his
faith in, so aware, in short, that he must
somehow be filled in his s pi r i t or fly apart,
that he staked his very life on the ultimate
assertion.4
Miller agrees that if Willy had been able to know that he
was "as much the victim of his beliefs as their defeated
exemplar," he would have been a more cons cious hero .
But
a necessary limitation of self -awareness in Willy, as in
any other character, ' seems to Miller to be what defines
him as a character; and he believes that it is this very
limit which completes--and more than that, makes possible-the man's tragedy.5
ELO~UENT
LANGUAGE
Related to the critical requirement of insight in the
hero is the demand for brilliance in his use of language .
Willy speaks a type of Brooklynese which Krutch, for example, judges "serves its purpose as well as the dialogue
of a Dreiser novel, but • • • is also almost a s undistinguished, as unpoetic , as unmemorable, and as unquotable ." 6
By his choice of realism as the basic style of this
4
"Introduction," pp . 34-35 .
5
Ibid . , p . 35 .
6
"Drama," Nation, CLXVIII (1949) , 284.
36
drama, Mi l l er had to more or less limit his characters to
the type of speech generally used by people in their situation.
It does not follow , however, that they were
thereby kept from eloquence.
As one reviewer remarks,
Salesman fuses "the American language, the American scene,
the Brooklyn accent, the Bronx cheer, all the muck and
melancholy joke of our petty-class life" which he describes
as having been "taken, shaken, rearranged, revitalized
and somehow rehallowed into the stuff of a compelling, surging quasi -poetry.,,7
Another critic believes that no other
.pl aywr i gh t in the theatre understands better than Mi l l e r
"how to combine the poverty-stricken imagery, the broken
rhythms and mindless repetitions, and the interminable
cliches of illiterate speech into something that has a
certain harsh and grotesque elegance.,,8
Miller, as we have seen, is p r i mar i l y a moralist;
and so the play can claim to be poetry "not of' the senses
or of the .soul but of ethical conscience," as Clurman
remarks,
It • •
•
its style • • • like a clean accounting on
the books of a wise but · severe sage ."9
I n composing it,
Miller had made the resolution "not to write an unmeant
word for the sake of the form but to make the form give
7
Gilbert W. Gabriel, "FLaygodng ;"
1949), 15.
~,
XXXIII (April,
8 Woolcott Gibbs, "A View from the Bridge," NY, XXI
(Oct . 8, 1955), 94.
9
Clurman , p. 27 .
37
and stretch and contract for the sake of the thing t o be
said."lO
He seems to have meant i t to be beautiful only
insofar as it is true and want ed its power over the audi en ce to issue pri marily from t he force of its moral truth .
10
"Introduction ," p , 31.
CHAPTER
THE
MORAL
That Death 2£
~
FORCE
V
OF
THE
PLAY
Salesman does achieve considerable
power over its audiences has been attested by critic after
critic.
John Ma s on Brown calls it " the most p oi gn ant
statement of man as he must f a c e hims e lf to ha v e come out
of our theatre."l
Clurman attribute s its "tremendous
import" to the fact that "it make s the audi e n ce recognize
itself."2
Perhaps t he most significant question in a
discussion of the play's dramatic form, however, is whe ther
or not its structure contributes anything to this distinct
moral force.
Downer observes: "By refusing to sacrifice the sense
of conviction that accompanies realism, Mi l l e r retains
the immediacy of a social document.
This undoubtedly
explains in part the stunning effect of the play upon its
audiences.")
I n j uridical terms- - wh lch recall Mi l l e r ' s
1
Brown, p. 198.
2
Clurman, p. 26.
)
Downer, p.
75.
)8
39
explaining drama as "a species of jurisprudence"--Gassner
also attempts to locate the source of its power:
All the discoveries in this drama are essentially self-discoveries by Willy Loman and the
son he miseducated. Yet the play was charged
with suspense. since Miller was trying a man
for his faults and follies. The fact that
Willy Loman shared these with a great many
ordinary men. a fact that gave Death of a
Salesman a good deal of its meaning'4was-not
allowed to exempt him from judgment.
And Clurman, in the same vein, says that the play "stirs
us by its truth, the ineluctability of its evidence and
judgment which permits no soft evasion• • • • We cry before
it like children being chastised by an occasionally humorous, not unkindly but unswerving father."S
Willy's agony
of self-discovery. his gradual realization that he has made
a commitment which by now is almost irrevocable, is somehow
our own.
In large part, this "i mme di a cy is due to the psychological reality permitted by the play's structure.
We are
observing Willy inwardly as well as outwardly at every
step.
Possibly, as Downer has hinted, Miller's chief
motive for using a basically realistic style was to allow
the play this deep-reaching emotional force.
In that
case. his combining with the realism enough expressionism
4
Gassner, p. 346.
S
Clurman, p. 27.
to show what happens in Willy's mind was probably meant
to provide an equally deep intellectual penetration.
Willy's story undoubtedly would lose some of its
impact if it were presented in anyone dramatic style.
In a piece of thorough realism, his past would have to be
either hinted at in the present action or told by means
of flashbacks; and neither treatment would reveal the
ironic divergence between his delusions and reality as
effectively as does the play's present contrapuntal form.
It seems rather certain, too, that Wi l l y as a simply
realistic character would arouse no emotion save pity-since the fact that he has, so to speak, prepared his own
trap would lose much of its appalling pertinacy if it
were relegated to the dramatic past.
But a thoroughly
symbolic version of the p l ay , on the other hand, would
retain irony only at the expense of immediacy.
There are
many ways in which the story could be done in abstract
form--ev~n,
for instance, as a ballet--but anyone of
them would allow it only the single dimension of the
morality play.
Morality is, of course, Mi l l e r ' s fundamental concern
in Salesman.
That would be apparent even without his
statement that he set out in this play not to "write a
tragedy" but to show the truth as he saw it. 6
6 "Introduction," p. 31.
In giving
·hi s t estimony to truth , however , he did create a t ragedy
classic al in scheme and experimental in style: modern
domestic drama raise d to th e power of world tra gedy by the
combined use of realism and expressionis m.
Bourgeois tragedy .
Ostensibly Death of a Salesman
is domestic tragedy, a dramatic t ype which h a s developed
. since Renaissance ti mes to beco me t he p r e domi n an t tragic
genre of the mode rn t heatre.
pro se drama
dealin~
It can be defined as serious
with t he everyday confl ict s of more or
less co mmonplace p eop l e .
Of late, as Mi lle r h a s poi n t e d
out, t his sort of p l ay - - l i k e the no vel , the f oremost type
of pr o se r e al i sm- -has t ended to gi ve i t self over to naturalism, t o dep i ct human lives a s if t h ey wer e de ter mine d
by emotions, i nherite d di spos iti on s , and pr ev a i l i ng s ocial
codes .
As a c on s equence , domes tic tragedy has co me to be
identi fied with p a tho s .
This , as we h ave seen, is one way of looking at Willy
Loman.
Jo hn Ma s on Brown, for instance, speaks of Sal e sman
as t he story of "a Ilittle man' who is sentenced t o dis cover his smallness rather than a bi g man undone by his
greatness ."?
But Oedipus, Lear, and other kingly h e r oe s
of tragedy can j u s t as well be describ e d as "sentenced t o
disc over t h eir smallness" and Wi l l y IIundone by h is gre at ness ."
?
Oedi pus , Lear, and Loman may see m to be strange
Brown, p .
195.
companions, but they are alike both in their hybris-their exaggerated opinions of themselves--and their
hamartia--fanatic resistance to any indignity which might
make them appear small.
Mor e than mos t criti cs woul d like t o admit, Will y's
story resembles that of Oedipus, the outstanding tragic
hero of classical Greek drama.
His problem, like t he
Theban ki ng ' s , begins as "Who is responsible f or this
catastrophe?" and changes during the course of the play
to "Who a m I ? II
Like Oedi pus he goe s toward self-discovery
fearfully, with a gr a dua l l y increasing knowle dge which he
tries t o conceal even fro m himself.
In their respective
dramatic situations both the American salesman and the
Greek ruler are led to realize that their own seemingly
acceptable actions h a ve ruined t he ir careers and unbalanced relationships wit hin t heir families.
The ironic
contrast between the h ero ' s pretensions and h i s li mitations iS ,exploited continuously in both plays.
Of course, there are differences between Oedipus and
Wi l l y , due primarily to the opposing styles of their
tragedies and secondarily to the dissimilarity in their
societies.
Being an heroic character, Oedipus is not
delineated in detail.
Outside of the events by which he
became ruler in The bes, we know nothing of him personally except that he is proud, intelligent, and energetic.
43
About Willy, on the other hand, we know almost everything -the details of his mannerisms as well as his dreams .
As Mi l l e r has observed, the styles of characterization
differ because social causation predominates in the Greek
play and psycholo gical causation in his own.
It would be
incorrect, however, to deny that Willy's society has been
an influence upon his personal motives; for only in a
competitive industrial economy could he have become what
he is .
This is the second point of contrast between his
characterization and that of Oedipus: although both of
their tragedies are possible only in their particular
positions in society, t he status of the Greek ruler is
far more peculiar than Wi l ly ' s .
Whereas his success has
been almost without peer, the salesman's is somewhat less
than average .
We r e he not in a society which claims to
offer equal opportunity to all, Wi l l y would have fewer
reasons to think so highly of himself.
The heroic do\vnfall .
Though it cannot be sai d that
Willy's play is classical in style as well as in scheme,
he is able to hold his own as an heroic figure .
Like the
kingly protagonists mentioned above, he too, after he has
seen his folly bring suffering upon others as well as himself, takes on a rather misguided atonement for his guilt
and achieves a sort of tragic victory in his death.
breakdown is in many ways that of a very big man.
His
He has
a flaw which makes him foolish , but he is brave enough
to qu estion all society in his demand for what he conceives
to be his rightful status .
What particularly s hows Miller's artistry as a playwright is the expressionism he uses to g ive this extraor dinary "common man" symbolic stature .
For Wi l l y could not
have achieve d his present si gnificance in a pur e ly realistic drama; his pride woul d seem unwarranted and his questionings amount to no more than the p e evi sh clawi ngs of an
ani mal upon its cage .
Mi l l er h ad to make h i m much larger--
and at the same t ime no larger- -than life .
In Willy's course toward self-discovery, his memories
and dreams function very much like the chorus in classical
Greek drama --explaining, lending si gnificance, and hi nting
at the truth about this man, notwithstanding what he says
about his own motives and actions .
Thus Mi l l e r gi v e s to
a modern experimental f orm a classic function: he uses
expres si9nism to make of an ordinary man a tragic her o , to
r eve al his gr a du a l tortu red self-discovery, to point up
the ironic contrast between his actions and t heir unexpe c ted but logical outcome , and to p rovide a deeper realis m
than conventional dramatic form would have allowed.
APPENDIX
LITERARY
INFLUENCES
ON
MI LLER
Following Ibsen, most modern tragedians have continued
in the style of stage realism and gradually diminished
the number of affirmations which it is fashionable for
dramatic characters ' to make.
In Death of
~
Salesman, how-
ever, Mi l l er ha s achieved heroic effect by both departing
from the realistic and exposing the ineluctable workings
of moral law.
The play's experimental form differs signif-
icantly from even t he di s gui s e d symbolis m of Ibsen's later
plays, and--as Krutch has emphasized--its moral necessarily
presumes both the existence of conscience and the power to
make a choice.
Nevertheless, lfi l l e r ' s work is in the Ibsen
tradition.
His close dramatic integration of the past and present, his awareness of "the process by which the present
has become what it is," is very much like what he calls
Ibsen's basic intention: "to assert nothing he had not
proved, • • • to cling always to the marvelous spectacle
of life forcing one event out of the jaws of the preceding
one and to reveal its elemental
45
cOl~istencies
with
46
s urprise ."l
Besides t hi s recognition of the " evo lut i onary
quality of life," there is more in Ibsen' s craftsmanship
which Mi l l e r admires: h i s acceptance o f t he s trength of
social forces and t he purity of hi s drama t i c technique .
He, Mi l l er says, "coul d mak e a playas men make watches,
precisely, i ntelligent ly, and telling no t mer el y the
minute and the hour but t he age .,,2
But it was "not because
he wrote about problems, but because he wa s illuminating
process," t hat t he Nor weg i an dramatist s pontane ously interested Mi l l er .
" Nothing in his play s exis ts fo r i tse lf,"
Mill e r explains, "not a s mart l i ne , not a ge s t ur e t hat
can be isolated.,,3
If we j u dge by h i s own statements, h owever , t he chie f
i nfluence upo n his work h as been n eith er Ibsen nor any
other playwright bu t rathe r the novelist Do s t oev ski .
He
h a s often refe rred to The Br others Karama zov as a bo ok
which changed h i s life .
"I picked (it) up," he s ays, "I
don't know how or why, an d all at onc e belie ved I was bo rn
to be a writer":
1
"Introduction," pp . 21 -22 .
2 Preface to Ar t hur Mi l l e r ' s adaptation of An ~$i)Y
of the People by He nr i k Ibsen ( New York, Viking-, -l
,
p.
I27
3 "The Shadows 0 f the Gods," p . 37 . An almos t i den ti cal comment has been made about Mi l l e r ' s work by Gera ld
Wea l e s in "Plays and Analysis ," Commonweal, LXVI (July 12,
1957) , 382 .
47
This was after I had graduated from high school,
and was working in a warehouse on Tenth Avenue
in Manha t t an. On the subway to and from wor k I
began reading, and concurrently saving my money
to go to school, for our family fortunes had
gone with the boom.~
Dostoevski's book, together with the national economic
depression, occasioned Mi l l e r ' s belief in the hidden order
of the world.
The novel gave him no answers to his ques-
tions, he says, but it did show that he was not alone in
asking them, since it "is always probing behind its particular scenes and characters for t he hi dden laws, for the
place where the gods ruminate and decide, for t he rock
upon which one may stand without illusion, a free man."S
Some years afterwards, when Mi l l e r had written several
prize-winning plays at the University of Mich i g an and gone
on to do a Broadway" flop" called The
~ ~
Had All the
Luck, the book again made a significant change in his life.
He had always been "in love with wonder," he s ays , and in
the play which failed he had t ried to grasp it, " to make
it on the stage."
But wonder had betrayed hi m; and so he
decided to take an opposi te course, looking for "cause and
effect, hard actions, facts, and the geometry of relati onships," holding back any tendency to express an idea
4
Twentieth Century Authors: First SU)Plement, ed.
Stanley J. KunItz {New York, WIlson, 1955 , p. 669.
S
"The Shadows of the Gods," p. 37.
48
unless it were literally forced out of a character's mouth.
Having again taken up The Brothers Karamazov, he had found
on its most colorful pages the thickest concentration of
definite facts and consequently came to realize that his
play had failed because of his having felt too much and
understood too little.
He determined to try one more play
and, if it too turned out to be impracticable, go into
another line of work.
During the ensuing two years he
wrote his first success, All ~ Sons. 6
Probably the characteristic in which he most resembles
the Russian novelist is his intense interest in character.
Even this early in rtl l l er ' s career John Mason Brown noted
as chief among the virtues of All
tionalism."
M!
Sons "a blazing emo-
Brown could easily have been writing about
Dostoevski when he said, "Although Mr . Mi l l e r ' s climaxes
are angry and anguishing, their power comes from quite
another source than his willingness to let his characters
shout.
L~ng
before his people explode, their inner ten-
sions make themselves felt.,,8
Another critic finds that
Miller's drama tic power . lies precisely in thi s "understanding of and compassion for human beings in their most
6 "Introduction," pp. 14-1.5.
7 Twentieth Century Authors, p. 670.
8
"New Talents and Arthur Miller," SRL, XXXII (Feb. 26,
1947), 23.
-
49
personal relationships--with the members of their family
or with themselves," adding that "Miller knows how to show
two people working to hurt one another when the genuine
impulse of each is to offer love.,,9
particular structure of Death of
~
Before he created the
Salesman,
r~ller
had
declared his irritation with the many people who were then
talking about new form: "This to me is an evasion of the
problem of playwriting, which is a revelation of human
motives regardless of form. ,,10
The fact that he went on
to make an innovation in dramatic technique must not be
taken to mean that he came to place characterization
second, since--as we have seen--Salesman's structure cannot
exist apart from its hero's peculiar psychological state.
When
r~ l l e r
said a few years ago that his aim has
always been "to bring to the stage the thickness, awareness, and complexity of the novel,,,ll he undoubtedly had
Dostoevski's work in mind.
will do
~
Perhaps someone eventually
comparative study of the two writers--or of The
Brothers Karamazov and Salesman--and find further parallels
in their works.
The third literary figure whom Miller has especially
9 Gerald Weales, "Plays and Analysis," Cormnonweal,
LXVI (July 12, 1957), .382.
10 Virginia Stevens, "Seven Young Broadway Artists,"
TA, XXXI (June, 1947), 56.
11 Twentieth Century Authors, p. 670.
50
cited as having influenced his artistic theory is Chekhov,
whom he admires princi pally for h i s dramatic balance .
He
points out that, although Chekhov's ov erwhelming interest
was in the spiritual lives of his characters, his p l ay s
are not "mere e xercises in ps ychology o"
The informing
principle o f everyone of them is a very cri tical poi nt of
view, not only toward t he char a c t ers but toward t he social
context in which they live. 12 We reme mber Mi ller's defining an organic aesthetic as "a tracking of impuls e and
causation from the individual to th e wor l d and back
again.,,13
To him balance is all; and he bel ieves that any
play which does not counterpoise social forces wi t h p sy c ho logical causatio n must by that very fact fail to achieve
symbolic stature.
A student of anyone of Mi l l e r ' s plays will find in
it something reminis cent of each of these wr i t er s : Ibsen's
sense of the past as .a determining factor in the mome nt
of the
pr~sent,
Dostoevski's elevation of personal con-
flict from the psychological to the moral level , and
Chekhov's integration of psychological and soci al fo rces
as they work upon human life .
The evidence of these
influences again suggests the traditionalism in Mi l l e r ' s
modernity: his study of timeless morality as it asser ts
12
"The Shadows of the Gods," p . 39 .
13
Ibid., p . 43 .
itself in contemporary society, with man's ideals and
i mpulses springing out sometimes with and sometimes against
the currents of social acceptance.
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----~
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_ _ _ _ _ __
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. •
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